Scripting Bridge and com.apple.iWork.Pages -- can this work?

Question

I am trying to count the words in Pages document (the doc format is RTF) using the scripting bridge. (I can do it using NSApplescript but I would rather not have all the applescript-aware duct tape in my code) When I perform this task using applescript (and NSAppleScript APIs) I can do this very simply (and successfully):

on wordCount(appName,docName)
local mydoc
local wordcount
tell application appName
    set mydoc to document docName
    set wordcount to count of words of mydoc
    log "wordcount = " & wordcount
    return wordcount
end tell
end wordCount

However when I try the equivalent using the scripting bridge all my objects seem to have null contents. My code is as follows:

+ (NSUInteger) wordCountForApp: (SBApplication*) sbApp docNamed: (NSString*) docName
{
    PagesApplication *pages = (PagesApplication*)sbApp; 
    PagesDocument *doc = [[pages documents] objectWithName:docName];
    PagesText *text = [doc bodyText];
    SBElementArray *words = [text words];
    NSUInteger wc = [words count];
    NSLog(@"Pages word count = %ul", (unsigned int) wc);
    return wc; // wc comes back as zero always ... grrrr
}

I have verified that I am running this stuff on the main thread (and that equivalent code works against TextEdit). Any ideas as to what is going on/how to work around?

Thanks for having read this far....

Nicholas Riley Nicholas Riley · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-29T19:01:08

That code works for me. The equivalent in F-Script:

> pages := SBApplication applicationWithBundleIdentifier: 'com.apple.iWork.Pages'

> (pages documents objectWithName: 'fun') bodyText words count
303

I'd suggest you step through it with a debugger and make sure that each object is what you're expecting, i.e. pages, [pages documents], etc.

If you're writing this code for external use, ideally you should not refer to documents by name; the user may have multiple documents with the same name open.

Another option is objc-appscript, which provides an neat ASTranslate utility that transforms AppleScript into Objective-C (or Ruby or Python for the other appscript bindings). For example, for the above, you'd have something like:

#import "PGGlue/PGGlue.h"
PGApplication *pages = [PGApplication applicationWithName: @"Pages"];
PGReference *ref = [[pages documents] byName: @"fun"];
PGCountCommand *cmd = [[ref count] each: [PGConstant word]];
id result = [cmd send];

Scripting Bridge and com.apple.iWork.Pages -- can this work?

2 Answers